Just got the email - going from $45 a month to $850 a month - What are you all migrating to?

[agentblack]

Just now, D9Hosting said:

I liked this section from the blog post that mentioned the exciting features they were working on for a future release:

More marketplace bloatware to look forward to, but who knows, maybe we are in the vocal minority and most users are requesting this?

I know for a fact we never requested these features.

[-M-]

6 minutes ago, agentblack said:

I know for a fact we never requested these features.

Simply put; WHMCS, cPanel and Plesk (and several others) belong to Webpros, which is owned by Oakley Capital (= investment company).

So it does make sense that they have added this. And they do not care if it was not requested. They are pushing to use all the software owned by them. Simple as that.

[WHMCS John]

Hi all,
Thank you for the continued discussion on this price change announcement.

When announcing these changes, we committed to listening to all the feedback we receive via various channels (including here on the community) and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

As a direct result of the constructive discussions we’ve had with a number of customers, we’re announcing two new Business license tiers at 20K and 30K clients, thereby reducing the size of the step which was previously from 10K to 50K. The details and updating pricing guide is in the process of being emailed to customers at present.

Matt has made a blog post discussing these changes and addressing some of the common questions we’ve received: https://blog.whmcs.com/133688/pricing-qa-with-our-ceo-matt-pugh

The intensity of the discussion here really speaks to the passion of our users, thanks for your continued support! We are excited by the possibilities these changes will unlock, enabling us to deliver new tools to help your business grow in future web-hosting landscapes.

[agentblack]

2 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

Hi all,
Thank you for the continued discussion on this price change announcement.

When announcing these changes, we committed to listening to all the feedback we receive via various channels (including here on the community) and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

As a direct result of the constructive discussions we’ve had with a number of customers, we’re announcing two new Business license tiers at 20K and 30K clients, thereby reducing the size of the step which was previously from 10K to 50K. The details and updating pricing guide is in the process of being emailed to customers at present.

Matt has made a blog post discussing these changes and addressing some of the common questions we’ve received: https://blog.whmcs.com/133688/pricing-qa-with-our-ceo-matt-pugh

The intensity of the discussion here really speaks to the passion of our users, thanks for your continued support! We are excited by the possibilities these changes will unlock, enabling us to deliver new tools to help your business grow in future web-hosting landscapes.

You are horribly dense aren't you?  You confusion passion with anger.

[Darthkatzs]

6 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

Hi all,
Thank you for the continued discussion on this price change announcement.

When announcing these changes, we committed to listening to all the feedback we receive via various channels (including here on the community) and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

As a direct result of the constructive discussions we’ve had with a number of customers, we’re announcing two new Business license tiers at 20K and 30K clients, thereby reducing the size of the step which was previously from 10K to 50K. The details and updating pricing guide is in the process of being emailed to customers at present.

Matt has made a blog post discussing these changes and addressing some of the common questions we’ve received: https://blog.whmcs.com/133688/pricing-qa-with-our-ceo-matt-pugh

The intensity of the discussion here really speaks to the passion of our users, thanks for your continued support! We are excited by the possibilities these changes will unlock, enabling us to deliver new tools to help your business grow in future web-hosting landscapes.

🤦‍♂️🤦🤦‍♂️

[brian!]

1 minute ago, WHMCS John said:

The intensity of the discussion here really speaks to the passion of our users, thanks for your continued support!

... but virtually everyone who is commenting on this thread is leaving for pastures new.... i'd hardly call that "continued support". 🙄

[agentblack]

11 minutes ago, brian! said:

... but virtually everyone who is commenting on this thread is leaving for pastures new.... i'd hardly call that "continued support". 🙄

yet another tone deaf response from WHMCS..  They honestly dont care. I finally got a response to my open ticket after putting John on blast here.. and his response is even more pathetic...

"We do not intend to provide the source code for WHMCS, nor issue refunds for a software license which will continue to function indefinitely, and with significantly enhanced functionality since originally purchased in 2013.
We will honour your current Support & Updates agreement, and will continue to provide security updates in line with our Long Term Support policy.

To be clear there is no abandonment occurring here; the WHMCS software continues to be active developed and maintained. Infact these pricing changes will enable us to continue to bring advances to our platform, maintain our position as the market-leader and deliver new tools to help your business grow in an increasingly competitive and consolidated business environment.

Our offer to refund your Marketplace points balance upon cancellation and closure of your accounts remains. Whilst I do hope you will continue to use our software, do let me know if you’d like to go ahead with the cancellation."

[yggdrasil]

I think it's time to stop complaining guys. Nothing you say here or anywhere else will change this. Embrace the upcoming train that is going to hit you. You need to realize this sooner than later. You either reshape completely your business model to accommodate your new costs per account to keep using WHMCS and pass the increases to your customers, or you start to plan for a migration to something else.

If you plan on keep using your owned license and not upgrade to the new subscription pricing, take into account you have months, not years to migrate. At least one security patch or two are released every year. You rather start planning now or once that security patch comes you will be forced to upgrade to the subscription to be able to patch your installation. The same goes for any bugs you experience now or will, and trust me, eventually you will find something not working as usual.

I find it amusing in the blog post he mentions they are not moving to a SaaS offering, but the page is already under construction for some time now:

Hosted Edition | WHMCS

A bit insulting is he actually thinks WHMCS gave you customers and increased your sales.

No Math Pugg, every customer I have, I acquired it on my own, some I know in person, and some came trough channels I control, WHMCS never gave me a single customer, and it surely never increased my sales either because they don't even know what WHMCS is. I give them support over the years, and I paid the services they are using, but I get it, you now want a cut of every single one of them, and a % of my hard work. If I get 100 new customers tomorrow after investing on them, you want me to pay you a few cents per year for every one of them? Not going to happen, not if its 1 customer, or 100,000. Your software is the same regardless of the amount of users I have, and it costs you exactly the same (since I pay the servers and costs to run it), so why should I pay you a % of my profits for the work I did?

I own a lot of other paid pieces of software. I pay all of them and renew them as well. My calculator app does not charge me based on the amount of calculations I make. My IDE does not charge me based on the amount of code lines I create. My email client does not charge me based on the amount of messages I receive. My OS does not charge me based on the amount of hours I use it.

Sorry, not going to happen.

Edited May 6, 2021 by yggdrasil

[brian!]

9 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

but the page is already under construction for some time now

since 2018 - that's development at WHMCS' usual pace - 3+ years and it's still not ready. 😎

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

"Hey we listen, we may well ignore you and continue to hope you slap your wangs against belt sanders... but we do infact listen" - whoever had their hand up puppet John today!

[agentblack]

59 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

I think it's time to stop complaining guys. Nothing you say here or anywhere else will change this. Embrace the upcoming train that is going to hit you. You need to realize this sooner than later. You either reshape completely your business model to accommodate your new costs per account to keep using WHMCS and pass the increases to your customers, or you start to plan for a migration to something else.

If you plan on keep using your owned license and not upgrade to the new subscription pricing, take into account you have months, not years to migrate. At least one security patch or two are released every year. You rather start planning now or once that security patch comes you will be forced to upgrade to the subscription to be able to patch your installation. The same goes for any bugs you experience now or will, and trust me, eventually you will find something not working as usual.

I find it amusing in the blog post he mentions they are not moving to a SaaS offering, but the page is already under construction for some time now:

Hosted Edition | WHMCS

A bit insulting is he actually thinks WHMCS gave you customers and increased your sales.

No Math Pugg, every customer I have, I acquired it on my own, some I know in person, and some came trough channels I control, WHMCS never gave me a single customer, and it surely never increased my sales either because they don't even know what WHMCS is. I give them support over the years, and I paid the services they are using, but I get it, you now want a cut of every single one of them, and a % of my hard work. If I get 100 new customers tomorrow after investing on them, you want me to pay you a few cents per year for every one of them? Not going to happen, not if its 1 customer, or 100,000. Your software is the same regardless of the amount of users I have, and it costs you exactly the same (since I pay the servers and costs to run it), so why should I pay you a % of my profits for the work I did?

I own a lot of other paid pieces of software. I pay all of them and renew them as well. My calculator app does not charge me based on the amount of calculations I make. My IDE does not charge me based on the amount of code lines I create. My email client does not charge me based on the amount of messages I receive. My OS does not charge me based on the amount of hours I use it.

Sorry, not going to happen.

We have started our migration.  Now that we have sorted out the best way to handle our dedicated server infrastructure, we are moving forward with Blesta. Their support has been far more responsive than the joke of a mess that WHMCS claims to call support, including responses directly from the owner to tough questions, which seemingly John can't handle. 

I agree with you that WHMCS didn't give us any clients.  Our clients don't even know what WHMCS is or how it impacts them.  Frankly, I could send them a note card as an invoice and they'd be just as happy to pay it that way than with WHMCS.  The overlords that think WHMCS is the greatest gift to the hosting industry is sorely mistaken.  The industry doesnt need WHMCS and WHMCS doesn't give anyone customers/clients.   WHMCS hasn't done diddly squat to earn anyone using their software customers. They didn't invest in the marketing, they haven't gone door to door in our cities and towns drumming up business.

This entire thread and the tone deaf responses from WHMCS just shows exactly how out of touch with reality they really are.  The entire organization from top down is in a sad state if they truly believe what they are doing is appropriate.

We are working feverishly to get transferred off WHMCS completely and then will begin investigating what legal recourse options may be open to us in order to obtain a refund of monies owed in the Marketplace accounts since WHMCS is unable and unwilling to indicate if the software will continue to function long term.

[yggdrasil]

44 minutes ago, agentblack said:

We have started our migration.  Now that we have sorted out the best way to handle our dedicated server infrastructure, we are moving forward with Blesta. Their support has been far more responsive than the joke of a mess that WHMCS claims to call support, including responses directly from the owner to tough questions, which seemingly John can't handle. 

I agree with you that WHMCS didn't give us any clients.  Our clients don't even know what WHMCS is or how it impacts them.  Frankly, I could send them a note card as an invoice and they'd be just as happy to pay it that way than with WHMCS.  The overlords that think WHMCS is the greatest gift to the hosting industry is sorely mistaken.  The industry doesnt need WHMCS and WHMCS doesn't give anyone customers/clients.   WHMCS hasn't done diddly squat to earn anyone using their software customers. They didn't invest in the marketing, they haven't gone door to door in our cities and towns drumming up business.

This entire thread and the tone deaf responses from WHMCS just shows exactly how out of touch with reality they really are.  The entire organization from top down is in a sad state if they truly believe what they are doing is appropriate.

We are working feverishly to get transferred off WHMCS completely and then will begin investigating what legal recourse options may be open to us in order to obtain a refund of monies owed in the Marketplace accounts since WHMCS is unable and unwilling to indicate if the software will continue to function long term.

Absolutely agree. I could also give customers a gift card, and they would pay, because it's my relationship with them, not because I use WHMCS. This is why I don't think people should be afraid of moving to Blesta or just anything else you want to use for billing. People do not care as long as you make it easy for them to pay and recurring billing is not rocket science either. Most products can do it.

I already moved some WHMCS stuff to custom in-house software, and it works amazing. Far better than WHMCS and this is only in 2 weeks. Can't even believe how slow WHMCS actually performs and all the issues it has. Being able to edit and customize things in the code directly is also a blessing. I'm actually thankful now to WHMCS because they forced me to migrate to greener pastures. I'm actually so happy with what I have achieved this far that I might actually not even use Blesta after all and just roll my own billing as well.

Edited May 6, 2021 by yggdrasil

[Nexxterra]

ONE THING that hundreds of people have demanded it the ability to lock the "show only active clients" feature to off... years ago, when this idiotic feature was added, it created issues that have to be dealt with, it did not eliminate any... the outcry was loud and clear, this feature should be able to be set on or off by the admin...yet whmcs, who insist they are progressive and listen, refuse to add this small piece of code.

My lifetime license will continue to be used as I transition a number of my properties away, after all, not one of my clients really care what script is used to pay me money, nor do they know.

I feel sorry for the numerous plugin providers that we have a relationship with for years, our licenses are coming due and we are holding off on renewing because after July, we will have the last version of WHMCS that we will ever have. I hope to see some of these great developers on some other sites!

[xyzulu]

1. It's quite possible WHMCS could re-write things so that future version of WHMCS limit the amount of active accounts you have without having to "phone home" to WHMCS to check on your license status. This would probably be a wise move. If this is a new suggestion that WHMCS chooses to  implement, I'd expect them to give me a owned WHMCS license as compensation.. oh .. wait...

2. It seems obvious that "we" are not the people WHMCS is engaging with. Perhaps some/most of us are just small-fry and the really future money earners for WHMCS are businesses a lot bigger than us (no offence to anyone in this thread). 

While I am personally waiting to see what happens, I don't expect WHMCS to change their minds about their future plans, it's more to see how it will affect me. Sure, I could move (I'd probably use Clientexec as I have used it before and know it does what I use WHMCS for already).  I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for something that I use as a tool for my business.. it's just this connecting "our" business success (host many customers we have) with a provider like WHMCS and cPanel that is leaving a bad taste in our mouths. 

[Mark]

14 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

As a direct result of the constructive discussions we’ve had with a number of customers, we’re announcing two new Business license tiers at 20K and 30K clients, thereby reducing the size of the step which was previously from 10K to 50K. The details and updating pricing guide is in the process of being emailed to customers at present.

Great! Looking forward to the updated pricing.

[-M-]

53 minutes ago, Mark said:

Great! Looking forward to the updated pricing.

LOL. Not much updated Mark. He means the email which was send out yesterday.
Just adds two hops in between. Same (absurd) pricing as before.

 

[Mark]

1 minute ago, MvdL1979 said:

Just adds two hops in between. Same (absurd) pricing as before.

Ugh. 🤦‍♂️

[ChrisTERiS]

As I seen, almost all of you, you're focusing only to price incremental, bypassing the main problem which is the price per client. That's wrong.

WHMCS is a software. It can have different price per installations or per support periods or for brand free only. Is not your business partner to get commission per client. I'm buying scripts since 1998. Only at Codecanyon I've more than 100. Is the first time (or among very few ones), that I seen a pricing tier like this. I think that first that I see was cPanel few months ago.

And what is really a "Client"? Client can be someone who paid a monthly hosting plan and then left out. Client is also someone who pay you $2/mo for a shared hosting account, or $10/mo for a VPS, or $50/mo for a dedicated etc etc. Are all these types of Client same? I mean financially. Surely not. So why to pay per client? (once more to make clear that I don't agree at all with this style).

If WHMCS (or any similar software) want to become a financial partner with you, at least let's try to by fair. And the only fair solution that I can think is to put tiers in your actual monthly income. Not the best, but much better than pay per client.

Edited May 7, 2021 by WHMUp

[-M-]

Sidenote; apparently WHMCS trusts their extreme price increase to counter the amount of customers which are moving away from WHMCS.

I think WHMCS is not acting smart, because;

• a lot of WHMCS users will leave; I said before 1/3, but maybe it will be more e.g. 2/5 (eventually more)
• WHMCS receives a massive amount of negative feedback/reviews which WILL hurt new potential customers
• they should listen to their customers for once, instead of doing their own thing (as they have done for many years)

In my humble opinion (and I have said it before); the hosting market is becoming more and more difficult to thrive in. It has been a pain for the past 3 or 4 years and is becoming more and more difficult as a "small/medium" hosting company compared to the bigger ones. So software like WHMCS (and also cPanel, Plesk, etc.) rely on these "smaller" hosting companies. But instead of supporting and helping them, they simply increase prices. We have seen it with Plesk (twice now), we have seen it with cPanel and we are now seeing it with WHMCS.

And if you think this is the last price hike, then you are dead wrong. These price increases will follow each other up more often and thus faster. WHMCS (or the company above) simply does not care about their customers anymore. You can see that with those owned licenses and also with these, simply put, crazy price increases. You will not only lose your current customers, but also scare away new customers. If they aren't scared away from these prices, then they sure will be scared away by the massive amount of negative reviews on Trustpilot and elsewhere. People actually do read reviews.

WHMCS says they listen. Yeah right. Not in my experience. They simply do as they please (or are forced to do from the company above them). Now they added two hops, like that will make a big difference for the "smaller" companies. It's already dificult enough to keep your head above water nowadays in these difficult (Covid-19) times. But what happens? Plesk increased their pricing again (early this year) and now WHMCS will increase their pricing as well (extremely). So we, as a hosting company, have to pay more and more and if we charge that to our customers they state; wow, you  are charging absurd prices! I will cancel my contract and move elsewhere (= 9 out of the 10 times to a very big hosting company; which use their own in-house developed software).

In the end, give or take a few years, smaller (hosting) companies will not exist anymore and only the big one remains. Which result in price hikes set by them, where software like WHMCS, Plesk, cPanel, etc. will hardly exist anymore, as these bigger companies use their own, developed in-house, software solutions. So in the end; we will all lose from this...

[twikamltd]

Thanks for the pricing update WHMCS, our pricing is only going up 5000% instead of 8400%. 🤣

What planet are you on? Of other hosts I know that use WHMCS at this level, guess how many tell me they're going to start paying these rates? Zero.

I think WHMCS may have over-estimated their value to us here 😂

[Troy]

I usually don't get into these tussles as I see it largely as a waste of time/energy. Usually the disastrous end result isn't changed by such complaints. I do enjoy reading them though!

We're a small host with active clients in the low four figures. I've had two owned licenses since 2008 and only used one in production. Our costs are going up 1100% as a result of this increase. Not as bad as some, but enough to hurt. The thing is, if cPanel hadn't done this to us already, I'd probably switch to a monthly plan and continue with WHMCS.

When cPanel raised their pricing, I opted to stick with them. When they raised it a second time, I began wondering where it would all end and started at least contemplating a control panel change, but wasn't yet serious enough to take concrete steps to plan such a move.

When WHMCS raised their pricing, and I realized that if we switch our owned license to monthly we'll be paying monthly what we paid annually for support and updates, I decided enough was enough. Since we can continue running the current version of WHMCS without support or updates, we have some time to think about the best way to migrate away from WHMCS.

However, what WHMCS may not have considered is how their action might be the last straw for people like me who had decided to stick with cPanel. When I look at the numbers, I realize that I can save far more monthly by migrating away from cPanel than I can from migrating away from WHMCS, so my first step will be to migrate away from cPanel. I can cut my control panel MRC in half or better by doing this and save far more per month than I would lose by switching to a monthly WHMCS plan.

What I'm wondering is whether WHMCS thought about the impact their decision might have on the cPanel side of the house. In our case, where we might have opted to switch to a monthly WHMCS license were it not for the cPanel increase, we've decided instead to run WHMCS for some time on the current version AND also begin migrating away from cPanel. Without this price increase from WHMCS that wouldn't have happened (or wouldn't have happened as quickly--would have depended on future cPanel price increases eventually pushing us away.)

Bottom line is that in our case, this increase will not benefit WHMCS financially, but WILL hurt cPanel financially. I can't help but wonder if this sort of scenario might be playing out for other cPanel & WHMCS customers as well.

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

46 minutes ago, Troy said:

I can't help but wonder if this sort of scenario might be playing out for other cPanel & WHMCS customers as well.

We've decided similar, but we've opted to go the other way! First we'll move over billing and we've already stopped cpanel sales and started selling DA instead! We've offered a credit (equivalent to a years hosting to anyone moving to DA) with more than 6 months remaining and it still works out cheaper than staying. Bottom line is we're taking a huge hit, but mitigating some of the incoming tidal wave of whmcs costs! Blesta and DA for us! I was worried customers would hate it - but it seems not! I sent an email with links to WHMCS new pricing structure and said it just isn't financially viable anymore! We can at least book customers in for migration and work our way down tiers in our spare time!

I certainly won't renege my agreements with non-profits, or put huge price rises on customers who are probably struggling to keep afloat themselves in one of the craziest times I've known in my lifetime! And the feedback from customers was 100% in agreement, many even thanked me for being open about the situation and asking for opinions on where we go as a company!

Will it change anything? Probably not, but now we can actually drop prices and still make more money when we recover from this awful state of affairs! What I will say, if we solely relied on hosting. We'd probably have been ruined by this! Fortunately we're not!  

[yggdrasil]

1 hour ago, Troy said:

I usually don't get into these tussles as I see it largely as a waste of time/energy. Usually the disastrous end result isn't changed by such complaints. I do enjoy reading them though!

We're a small host with active clients in the low four figures. I've had two owned licenses since 2008 and only used one in production. Our costs are going up 1100% as a result of this increase. Not as bad as some, but enough to hurt. The thing is, if cPanel hadn't done this to us already, I'd probably switch to a monthly plan and continue with WHMCS.

When cPanel raised their pricing, I opted to stick with them. When they raised it a second time, I began wondering where it would all end and started at least contemplating a control panel change, but wasn't yet serious enough to take concrete steps to plan such a move.

When WHMCS raised their pricing, and I realized that if we switch our owned license to monthly we'll be paying monthly what we paid annually for support and updates, I decided enough was enough. Since we can continue running the current version of WHMCS without support or updates, we have some time to think about the best way to migrate away from WHMCS.

However, what WHMCS may not have considered is how their action might be the last straw for people like me who had decided to stick with cPanel. When I look at the numbers, I realize that I can save far more monthly by migrating away from cPanel than I can from migrating away from WHMCS, so my first step will be to migrate away from cPanel. I can cut my control panel MRC in half or better by doing this and save far more per month than I would lose by switching to a monthly WHMCS plan.

What I'm wondering is whether WHMCS thought about the impact their decision might have on the cPanel side of the house. In our case, where we might have opted to switch to a monthly WHMCS license were it not for the cPanel increase, we've decided instead to run WHMCS for some time on the current version AND also begin migrating away from cPanel. Without this price increase from WHMCS that wouldn't have happened (or wouldn't have happened as quickly--would have depended on future cPanel price increases eventually pushing us away.)

Bottom line is that in our case, this increase will not benefit WHMCS financially, but WILL hurt cPanel financially. I can't help but wonder if this sort of scenario might be playing out for other cPanel & WHMCS customers as well.

I think a lot of people are in the same situation because WHMCS + cPanel was a natural combination for most hosts and I agree, people would have switched to the new WHMCS pricing except cPanel already hit them hard, their costs per account are basically going up from both sides, and they have to pick a side.

Personally I decided to drop both products. I'm not paying a cost per account when it's running on the hardware I paid.

Edited May 7, 2021 by yggdrasil

[yggdrasil]

33 minutes ago, chrisb2012 said:

We've decided similar, but we've opted to go the other way! First we'll move over billing and we've already stopped cpanel sales and started selling DA instead! We've offered a credit (equivalent to a years hosting to anyone moving to DA) with more than 6 months remaining and it still works out cheaper than staying. Bottom line is we're taking a huge hit, but mitigating some of the incoming tidal wave of whmcs costs! Blesta and DA for us! I was worried customers would hate it - but it seems not! I sent an email with links to WHMCS new pricing structure and said it just isn't financially viable anymore! We can at least book customers in for migration and work our way down tiers in our spare time!

I certainly won't renege my agreements with non-profits, or put huge price rises on customers who are probably struggling to keep afloat themselves in one of the craziest times I've known in my lifetime! And the feedback from customers was 100% in agreement, many even thanked me for being open about the situation and asking for opinions on where we go as a company!

Will it change anything? Probably not, but now we can actually drop prices and still make more money when we recover from this awful state of affairs! What I will say, if we solely relied on hosting. We'd probably have been ruined by this! Fortunately we're not!  

My customers are also struggling. Raising them the pricing is out of the question, but you can only absorb the increases for some time, when it's coming from all sides, cPanel, WHMCS, domain registrars, you can only take it to certain point until you actually start to lose money per account.

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

2 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

My customers are also struggling. Raising them the pricing is out of the question, but you can only absorb the increases for some time, when it's coming from all sides, cPanel, WHMCS, domain registrars, you can only take it to certain point until you actually start to lose money per account.

Yeah, we're just dropping those services! I'm not supporting the decision my my money! It is a drop in the ocean to them but combined with all the others leaving it'll hopefully give them the feedback they keep saying they listen to! 

Consolidation into less, but more valuable customers just means they'll get hurt when one goes under or rolls their own! A lot of the bigger hosts will consider it! Whmcs is not worth 1299 a month 🤣